


The Space Between

by andyouknowitis



Series: Certain Calculations [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:21:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a comic book/superhero lover and lifelong fan of all things Marvel to boot I was never not gonna love this show. I fell in love with these two within about 0.7 seconds of them appearing onscreen. They are utterly adorable and fairly make my heart sing, even when they’re breaking it. This is a Leo POV response fic to the 'Shadows/Heavy Is The Head' episodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

He’s always been drawn to how things fit together. Always worked at finding a way to mend the things that don’t.

He knows when something isn’t quite working the way it should. When some vital component is missing in the creation of something new, or in the construction of something else, out of old parts made more. He can tell, feel almost, when that essential part is not yet there. The part that takes something from an incomplete idea into a beautiful reality.

So he knows.

He knows that things are not the same as they once were. His brain tries to reassemble his thoughts, lending broken parts into spaces where they don’t quite seem to belong. The stuttered stream of all those words that are missing, so much on the tip of his tongue, feed his frustration, and yet he lingers in the healing balm, that feeling of her presence.

_'You've been beside me the whole damn time.'_ _  
_

For all the words that seem to evade him now, there are ones that his heart remembers. And all of them are theirs.

The threads of the truth lie in that dark blue jumper. He knows that that particular shirt and that particular sweater will always belong to one of the defining moments of his existence. The moment she stepped off the plane and he thought that she had left him. That she was gone. It’s etched in his consciousness, in the file marked  _Jemma_. That jumper. That shirt. That button. Except this time the button is still done up tight. A small detail but an important one. And he’s afraid.

He knows that maybe his body came up from the bottom of that ocean but that perhaps his heart still lies somewhere at the bottom of an unknown sea. That his mind, the thing that has always been the most valued thing about him, is not what it once was. He wants to be useful again. He wants to help. The darkest parts of him are trying not to give in to that small internal struggle, always with him, that maybe he shouldn’t be here, that he’s good, but not that good. That he’s out of his depth. That they only keep him here because they need Simmons here. That being Fitz, Leopold Fitz, just an average genius, is not enough. That it will never be enough.

Part of him feels like he’s still trapped in that box. No air and no hope for survival. But she brought him back.

She brought him back.

His mind feels caught on the edge of a sigh. And he’s too scared to take a breath. To let it go. Because she may have brought him back but he’s learning that no matter how much he wants it, no matter how much he longs for what they were, how lost he gets in all those fractured parts, that there is no going back. If he could just have it, a moment, to speak again, the way that they once were. Just another moment to be the engineering to her bio-chem. He could survive anything, anything at all, if he could just be the Fitz to her Simmons again. Yet he knows that he can’t. That something is wrong.

Because she is here. But he knows that all of him is not.

*


End file.
